With her charming Australian accent, Bronwen Steine has a voice you could listen to all day, and she knows plenty about the world of Reiki. With husband Frans Steine she cofounded the International House of Reiki and has written several highly regarded books on the subject. Steine makes the process of learning this practice fun, natural, and rewarding. She's a great guide on the path toward self-healing and restoring energy balances. Reiki Meditations for Self-Healing is a two-CD set full of enriching visualizations, exercises, and meditations to help activate the healing process within any open-minded and willing listener. Take your time, follow along, and let the miracles of self-discovery and enhanced well-being follow.

Disc one introduces the concepts of Reiki and provides exercises in meditation and visualization, beginning with session one, "The Three Diamonds." Here Stiene shows us how to take our health back. "This fearless act of self responsibility" brings encouraging confirmations and mantras--"Choose to live optimally on every level," she advises. Stiene shows us how to bring our body back to balance and wholeness, and more important to incorporate and use the power of negative energy for balance ("if there was no negative energy, positive energy couldn't exist"). With Reiki, it becomes more about achieving a state of balance--nonduality or enlightenment, as opposed to merely "feeling better." She also helps us find the center of our work space, enabling higher healing productivity.

Disc two focuses on the five major elements of Reiki: precepts, hand postures, techniques, mantras, and the spiritual blessing. "For today only, do not anger, do not worry, be humble, be honest in your work," Stiene advises. "Be compassionate to yourself and others." The second of the five elements is the hand postures, which help you feel and conduct "the flow of energy around you." Stiene's skills as a meditation instructor are pretty strong, and you can feel yourself sliding into a state of deep relaxation just from the subtle intensities of her sweet Australian-accented voice. As a gateway into the world of Reiki, Reiki Meditations for Self-Healing should be considered a canonical (audio) text. From learning to heal one's own self it becomes much easier to move into the world of helping others, and the energy Stiene sends out is palpable even from the digital CD distance between you.